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"Better get up and at 'em," Drake said and together, we got up off the bed. Drake went into the bathroom and I went back to the living room, where Sophie was happily playing in her playpen, her pacifier in her mouth.
When Drake was dressed, he came out to the living room where we sat and bent down to kiss us both goodbye. I walked him to the door with Sophie in my arms.
"I wish you didn't have to go to work tonight," I said. "You should be the one who gets to switch shifts considering your mother's so sick."
"There are only so many neurosurgeons to switch with."
I nodded but felt bad for Drake that he had to work despite all the stress he was facing.
"Tomorrow," Drake said and stroked my cheek. "We'll try to relax and enjoy each other but it depends on how my mother is doing."
"We'll play it by ear."
We kissed once more, he kissed Sophie and then he was gone.
Chapter 12
DRAKE
I stopped in to check on my mother before my shift started.
She was alone in a rare moment when her family was either taking a coffee break or was on their way to the hospital. Her room was quiet and she was laying with her head turned to the window. I wasn't sure if she was asleep so I walked in quietly, just in case.
I sat on the other side of her bed and waited, not wanting to wake her up. Her hands had been restrained with soft fabric restraints. She must have been pulling at her IV. I checked and I could see they'd wrapped her arm where she must have torn out the previous IV. They started another in her other arm and restrained her.
No matter what she had done to me, I still hated to see her that way – incoherent, confused, and panicking. She was still my mother and I did have fond memories of her from long ago. I remembered sitting on her lap when I was very young, listening to her read to me from her favorite children's books – Winnie the Pooh, Lightfoot the Deer and other books she was read as a child. I remembered her caring for me when I was sick and had whatever virus was going around. I remembered her baking special cookies for me and sitting with me after school while I ate them and drank my milk.
It was my father I rarely saw. He was the one away at the hospital for hours and hours. He was the one to hop on a plane and fly to some far-flung African community to do surgery for free. He was the one working late in his garage on his car or in his office, perfecting the design of a new surgical tool.
My mother was always there – until she wasn't.
Then, she was gone from my life without a word. My father told me that she left suddenly but that she had been unhappy for months, perhaps years he finally admitted. He blamed himself and said that instead of turning to her for comfort with his own pain and loss over Liam's death, he turned to his work.
He became a workaholic who failed to see my mother's emotional decline and distance. He had no idea she was suicidal. She put on the best face she could and kept on going through the motions but her heart and mind were no longer with us.
When she left, that was it. My dad sat me down at the kitchen table and said that my mother had gone away and would probably not ever come back.
I felt, as all children do, that she left because of me. That I was a bad boy and that if I had only been better, if I had only tried harder, she would have stayed and loved me more.
So much of my adolescence, teen years and adulthood had been spent looking for a way to work out my deep-seated trauma from her leaving me.
I stopped trusting. Everyone.
To adapt, I followed my father's example and worked extra hard at everything, trying to compensate for my feelings of inadequacy by achieving more than everyone else. I was the youngest graduate in my high school and the youngest – at the time – college student and then medical student. I was the youngest neurosurgeon.
None of it was enough.
My mother stirred on the bed and so I stood up and went to the other side and saw that her eyes were open.
"Hello, mother," I said, despite the fact she didn't know me – or might not remember. "It's me, Drake."
I took her hand and held it in mine, then leaned down and kissed her cheek.
She didn't pull away, but I saw no recognition in her eyes.
"Doctor, doctor, doctor..." was all she managed.
I glanced down to see my scrubs and my stethoscope around my neck. Of course, she would think I was there as a doctor.
